Adam Larson: 00:05

Welcome to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larson and today I'm joined by Olsen, department chair at Utah Valley University and an expert in accounting and personality research. In this episode, Kari shares how his early love of business and personality tests shaped his career leading to his study on the impact of personality traits on teamwork, leadership, and decision making at work. We discuss why understanding personality is crucial for improving firm performance, exploring surprising insights about executives, like when traits such as narcissism can actually benefit an organization, and highlight how self awareness can help both managers and employees thrive. Kari brings practical framework and advice you'll find valuable whether you're building teams or seeking personal growth.

Adam Larson: 00:45

So join us for an engaging dive into the human side of accounting and business. Let's get started. Well, Kari, I'm really excited to have you on the podcast today. And today, we're gonna be covering a paper that was done and the topics within it. And I wanted to kind of start with what sparks your interest in in exploring things like personality traits, especially in the context of accounting.

Adam Larson: 01:12

And why is this timely to talk about today?

Kari Olsen: 01:15

Yeah. So this goes back to when I was a was a kid. So I had a paper route as a kid. Every afternoon, I'd deliver the papers. And I'd sit and fold and put rubber bands on the paper, and I'd sit and read the paper.

Kari Olsen: 01:27

And I'd read the sports section, obviously, first because that's what I loved and was passionate about. But on the back of the sports page was the business section. And so I'd get done, and I just, you know, started reading more about business, and all the stock tickers at the time were listed in the paper and stock changes. And so I just became really interested in the business world in general. And then my mom, she was a English teacher, and she would bring home all these personality tests that she would get at school from other teachers.

Kari Olsen: 01:57

You know? They'd just team things that they're doing, whatever. And so that just kind of all meshed in my mind growing up that I liked business. I liked the stock market. I liked the personality angles and seeing what was happening with people, and that kinda created my initial interest.

Kari Olsen: 02:13

You know? And today, there people are still people. People have jobs. People go to work. They have bosses.

Kari Olsen: 02:19

They have colleagues and to have to interact. And people have different views on life and different preferences. And that's really what personality is. It's kinda like your preference or inclination for doing things on how you process the world. And I think that's timely because we're so connected.

Kari Olsen: 02:35

We see social media. We know what's happening in people's lives. We're more attuned to the forefront of decisions people are making and manifestations of their personality. So I think it's really important now to understand it at a deep academic level. So it's not just stereotypes.

Kari Olsen: 02:52

Right? It's a it's a true grounded scientific approach to understand what personality is. I really like that the thought that no matter what division you work in an organization, no matter where you are, we're all just humans and we're people, and we all interact with each other like other humans do.

Adam Larson: 03:09

And I think sometimes when we get lost in the language of business, you get lost in the ethereal comments about business, we forget that we're all just humans trying to work to a common good, and that's kind of what businesses are. And it's hard to because some people some this is marketing person. That's an accounting person. No. It's just a person who happens to be working in that division.

Kari Olsen: 03:29

Absolutely. And it and it is about those connections.

Adam Larson: 03:32

Like Mhmm.

Kari Olsen: 03:33

Know, we have tasks that we have to complete in any type of job, and personality will actually inform kind of a sorting into different tasks that people have preferences for. But at any level, right, you are interacting with other people. You're communicating. You form different teams, and understanding personality can really help, you know, adjust how you might interact with people. It might adjust assignments that people would be comfortable with at work.

Kari Olsen: 03:59

I see that, like, in my coauthor teams. I've got about twenty, twenty five coauthors that I do academic work with, and they're all very different. Even though we're all accounting professors, we still have unique personalities and preferences. And, you know, some people would rather have a Teams or Zoom call, and other people wanna have an in person meeting. And some people are really good about taking risks, and other people are like, no.

Kari Olsen: 04:25

Let's be more cautious. And so all of those interactions, that's a day to day life. And that's what I think provides the meaning to life is your social connections and relationships. And so I think understanding people better can then help you do better at work. It's goes beyond that to community and family, but, certainly, my focus is more the work setting and how it affects people.

Adam Larson: 04:48

Yeah. So in your paper, you introduced, like, a a new framework. Maybe you can walk through some of the components of that framework because, you know, it wouldn't be a good, you know, research paper without a good framework to offer. Right?

Kari Olsen: 05:00

That's right. So it's a it's a very simple idea that people we start with the people, and they have different traits. And the psychology research, you know, has a whole thing about nature versus nurture where those traits come. That's not really our scope. We're we're accounting professors here.

Kari Olsen: 05:17

So we kinda just do a little hand waving and say, look. There's great research if you wanna study more of that deeply. We kinda pick it up at the at the stage of as people go interact, they're gonna interact with different environments, and that could be a style of work where you might have an organization that's, you know, very micromanaging or the environment is very entrepreneurial. And then they'll have tasks that could be really tedious, could be open ended, could be creative. And so the personality will kinda interact with how people approach their situation.

Kari Olsen: 05:50

And so it's kind of this in the academic world, it's a person situation interaction. Right? And that will then manifest in our accounting world in judgments, decisions, choices that people are going to make. And, ultimately, that will then lead to firm performance outcomes. That could be at the employee level or big picture financial performance for a firm.

Kari Olsen: 06:13

And so it's just kinda walking along that causal chain of people interacting with different environments, and their personality will affect how they respond. And then that will affect choices, decisions, which ultimately affects firm performance outcomes. And so we pick up in our research over the years with my coauthor teams at different stages. Let's look at this really specific interaction and understand it better. Or, hey.

Kari Olsen: 06:43

This for firm outcome is really important in the marketplace. Let's understand kind of the precepts that that led to that outcome taking place. So that's kind of the overall framework.

Adam Larson: 06:55

Do you think it would be it would behoove, like, leaders in organizations to understand the personalities of the people that are on their teams and know how they can work together better? Is that and when you're even hiring new people, are you trying to get a gauge for their personality to see if it'll fit with among the team?

Kari Olsen: 07:11

Absolutely. And in fact, I would say it actually begins with the manager themselves. That there'll be some introspection to understand if if they're gonna have subordinates, right, that they're gonna bring on or people they're gonna work with. Understanding their own personality and styles is probably actually the first place I'd tell them to start. And then you can go into what personalities would do well in this job.

Kari Olsen: 07:33

Yeah. There's one trait that I've I've done some recent work on called need for cognition, and that's someone's inclination to really think through detailed, right, and understand, you know, where do numbers come from and things like that. Well, accountants generally of are high on need for cognition. Right? They're they're in the details of numbers.

Kari Olsen: 07:53

They understand journal entries. They you know, that that's their job. It's very task based. Right? Where we see that maybe taking place is, like, in a feedback.

Kari Olsen: 08:02

Right? Because if someone is getting detailed feedback, high need for cognition person is already doing that. They're already thinking that way. But if you have someone that's low need for cognition, they don't think that way. Right?

Kari Olsen: 08:14

And so now you need a feedback mechanism that provides more detailed prompts. And so we did this in one of our studies, and we found that providing, you know, these more detailed prompts with some relative performance helped people with low need for cognition do better. And so those are subtle things where it's kind of a task base. And when then you get in a group setting on a team, you might have traits that I've studied like entitlement or narcissism, and these really affect how the the social view of others is is put together. Right?

Kari Olsen: 08:48

So if I'm entitled, I feel like I'm more deserving than other people. Right? And that mantra kinda goes through all of my interactions. It affects how I view a day to day job and what assignments are given to other people, who's responsible for things. It affects how I view performance being evaluated.

Kari Olsen: 09:06

And so a manager should be mindful of maybe some of these malignant kind of unfavorable traits that can happen on teams. Because if you introduce that, it could be toxic. Right? You have a hostile work environment. It could be very disruptive.

Kari Olsen: 09:22

You don't have team camaraderie. So firm culture, firm CEOs, managers will set that. Like, here's our strategic mission. Here's what we want. But if you don't match that with the people that can help create that organically, you'll have a lot of disconnect.

Kari Olsen: 09:39

Wow.

Adam Larson: 09:40

There's there's so much there that we could say about. Right? Man, we could go so many directing It would directions. But I I think some one thing that picked up on, like, the the whole things like, you know, narcissism, those are, you know, those are traits that a lot of times has a very negative connotation. Right?

Adam Larson: 09:56

You see, oh, that person's a narcissist. You can if you put type that term in any social media, it'll come up with hundreds of videos of how to deal with narcissists and all that kind of stuff. But they aren't a lot of times you see things like not narcissism and overconfidence, especially in, like, executives. And, you know, I talked about that, you know, when we when we met previously. And, you know, what are some surprising things that you find when you see that in in people at at the higher level?

Adam Larson: 10:19

And how do you kind of work with those people? Because with the with the negativity toward those personality traits, sometimes you wanna completely shut off and you don't wanna do anything with have anything to do with them, but that's kind of impossible. Absolutely. And what

Kari Olsen: 10:32

we what we generally would see in, like, the media or reports or at a family party, and people are complaining about their boss, right Yeah. Who might be very narcissistic. Right? One of the telltale traits of a narcissist is they lack empathy. Right?

Kari Olsen: 10:46

And that means that at a interpersonal level, they often kind of struggle to connect with others, right, because they're they're lacking empathy. That said, narcissism is just an everyday personality trait. Just like self esteem or need for cognition, people have this on a continuum. And there are actually seven the academic literature says there's seven sub facets of narcissism. So some of them might stand out like vanity.

Kari Olsen: 11:16

Right? That that they they wanna look good. Right? Exploitative. Right?

Kari Olsen: 11:22

And it's hard to imagine there's a lot of great things coming out of someone who's being exploitative. Right? And so we see that anecdotally, but some of these other traits like self sufficiency, that actually might be a really good thing for someone who's gonna lead out as a leader, manager, executive, where the job often is kind of lonely. They have to make decisions. And so having a a strong sense that, hey.

Kari Olsen: 11:48

I can do this, and I can make that decision, that would rate them higher on the narcissism scale, but it's not obvious that that's undesirable. And so in a lot of my research, you know, we find that narcissistic CEOs' average performance is better. They have higher earnings per share. They have higher stock prices, firms they lead. Now sometimes they might be accomplishing that through a myopic short term view because they're trying to make themselves look good.

Kari Olsen: 12:15

But, you know, across the spectrum, when we have political leaders, when we have business leaders, they need a sense of charisma to rally the troops, to put out a vision. They need a sense of taking risks in order to you know, in face adversity rather than being less I mean, I and, like, more conservative, they still will take risks. And on the other side of risk is reward. And so for a business, sometimes that's the best thing you can have is someone who's gonna take big, big risks. And so narcissism, rightly so, gets a lot of interpersonal conflict.

Kari Olsen: 12:54

But if you watch, a lot of times, the stories are about, wow. They they didn't listen to feedback or they were harsh in not understanding my situation. But when it comes to leading a team and managing a firm or country or whatever it might be as a leader, a narcissistic personality can actually have some good outcomes. And I've seen that in the data, and that was initially a little surprising, but, you know, I've I've seen both. There's favorable outcomes, and there's on the on the side that there are some shortsightedness that comes from that.

Adam Larson: 13:27

Yeah. Well and and as you're pointing out, it's narcissism isn't all, quote, unquote, bad necessarily. There's elements of it that can have negative effects toward other people. And and I think that you have to kind of balance those two things when because there's a lot of aspects that narcissism and especially in in a CEO, like you were saying, can cause, like, great strides in an organization and having to balance that with people and dealing with people. Like, you have to you have to take on other traits in order to be successful at both almost.

Kari Olsen: 14:00

Yeah. So let me give you a couple of other findings from the narcissism my narcissism research. So we looked at kind of, are they more aggressive in their taxes? Because they are, you know, sense of superiority. Their risk they they take risks.

Kari Olsen: 14:15

Right? So a lot of the tax law is just, like, more likely than not. So it's like, you're if 51% confident that that this is within the guidelines, you can kinda take more aggressive positions. Right? So it's not saying, hey.

Kari Olsen: 14:31

They're committing for tax fraud. Right? It's it's just saying that they might take positions that are less conservative, right, on this. Well, this has a fundamental explanation. They are more aggressive in their taxes.

Kari Olsen: 14:45

They have lower effective tax rates. This frees up millions of dollars of cash for the firm. And one of the other things narcissistic CEOs do is they empire build. They're gonna go do an acquisition. Right?

Kari Olsen: 14:56

And so their use their their personality is being manifest in a little more aggressive tax positions that frees up cash that then they can go empire build and make the firm expand. So, you know, is that a good back outcome or a bad outcome? Right? I mean, we have to look at specifics, but the on average effect and, you know, we have samples of, S and P 1,500 firms. Yeah.

Kari Olsen: 15:25

The on average effect suggests that, hey. They're using their discretion within accounting rules to meet their ends of expanding their empire. And that actually, for a executive, might be a really good strategic move. Yeah. To label things like favorable or unfavorable, good, bad, it's really nuanced when you see that.

Kari Olsen: 15:50

So Yeah. It is. And and I appreciate that that that you said that because I I think sometimes certain items get bad press,

Adam Larson: 15:59

and because of that, we stay away from them. But it's like, wait. We have to look at it holistically in a sense.

Kari Olsen: 16:04

That's right. One other one. So if we if we look at, like, a financial reporting cycle Yeah. Firms issue forecasts, then they have analysts who respond, then we have the actual earnings come out, and then they could use non GAAP measures after the fact. So I've studied that whole cycle of narcissistic CEOs.

Kari Olsen: 16:25

Before earnings, when they issue forecasts, they do a good job. They're just as good as every other manager. It's a signal of their ability. It makes them look good. And then we get to their actual earnings, and it turns out they're doing better.

Kari Olsen: 16:38

Right? Higher stock prices, higher earnings per share. They're more likely to meet or beat earnings. But then on the the kind of the deviousness comes out after the fact, if if they haven't looked good through those means, they'll use non GAAP measures after the fact. They're more likely to use them.

Kari Olsen: 16:55

They have bigger magnitude of adjustments. And when we look, they're lower quality. So they're they're using them kind of in a

Adam Larson: 17:03

way

Kari Olsen: 17:03

to, again, use the discretion in the in the financial reporting world to make themselves look good. And on the one hand, they're behaving really well. On the other hand, they might be doing something a little just to try to make themselves look good. You know, if you just say, hey. Narcissists are always bad.

Kari Olsen: 17:18

It's like, well, actually, when the incentives align, this is actually potentially a a beneficial thing. Right? So it's being aware of that whole picture of what's the situate and that goes back to our framework. What's the situation? What's the incentives?

Kari Olsen: 17:34

And how does the personality interact with that? Yeah. Now I wanted to to shift the conversation a

Adam Larson: 17:41

little bit back to, like, to personality assessments. You know, you mentioned, like, when you were young, your mom would bring them home. Like, I remember having to take them in college. And Yeah. And I remember when I remember when I started doing online job applications or or computerized job applications.

Adam Larson: 17:54

You go to a place, and they have a a specific computer to take an application, and there was what essentially was a personality assessment. Were like

Kari Olsen: 18:00

Yeah.

Adam Larson: 18:00

Well, if this happens, what would you do? Kinda, you know, those kind of questions. And so, I guess, it's twofold. Like, you know, obviously, this is great data that firms can use to kinda help strengthen teams and understand. But, also, you know, if if you've taken a number of these personality assessments, the questions all sound very similar.

Adam Larson: 18:17

And and sometimes internally, you feel, oh, I know how to answer this, or I know what they want me to say. And so, like, what do you how do you balance, like, hey. This is great data you can use as a team versus, you know, the person side of it where, you know, there might can the answers kinda get jaded over time the more you have to take these?

Kari Olsen: 18:35

Yeah. So at a high level, it's it's just one input. I wouldn't base any decision on hiring or promoting simply off of personality tests. It's just one input. Yeah.

Kari Olsen: 18:48

And sometimes people bristle it. Oh, they're using personality of this sort. I mean, what's happening when you do an interview? Like, you're asking them about competencies and abilities, but you're also assessing to a large extent their fit within the organization, their personality. Right?

Kari Olsen: 19:06

And so Mhmm. If you can do it through an interview, you can also do it through a systematized way that is backed by quality research that has the right statistics and all those things. And there is kind of, like, you know, some personality tests you took are kinda just fun. You know? They may sort you into different buckets or categories.

Kari Olsen: 19:26

I did one with my kids recently. Like, you know, which which house of Harry Potter would you be sorted into? Right? Yep. So they're fun, and they usually they do kind of connect with us.

Kari Olsen: 19:37

Like, oh, yeah. It sounds pretty true. Right? From an academic standpoint, we want a little more robust measures. And, really, what that means is they have better psychometrics.

Kari Olsen: 19:50

They're more reliable. The the items move together. Right? And some of those bucket ones don't quite do that, but they're fun. So, yes, people could.

Kari Olsen: 19:59

Oh, there is kind of this, oh, they expect this. But, you know, generally, if you have enough questions that you can sort through, people generally are very honest. Some of the commonly used scales are just one question. People know what if they're narcissist or not. People usually generally know that.

Kari Olsen: 20:14

Mhmm. And so for managers, you know, I'd say it's one input, but it's something that can have red flags in terms of maybe this is a too strong malignant trait that we wouldn't want in our firm. More generally, though, it's just gonna be just a piece of the puzzle, right, that helps you know, hey. You know, that person I didn't realize was an introvert or extrovert. Or Yeah.

Kari Olsen: 20:40

Didn't realize that they like a high need for cognition. They're like, think through things. And that might affect placement on teams. You know, managers will have different styles. Maybe some are more hands on, hands off that might influence who I put with which team, which tasks get assigned to different groups.

Kari Olsen: 20:58

So it's never, like, the end all, be all, but it on the margin, I definitely think it makes sense. Managers are already doing this. Right? You make that judgment as a manager.

Adam Larson: 21:09

Mhmm.

Kari Olsen: 21:09

So having data that is vetted that can help guide your decision makes a ton of sense. So I've seen more and more firms embedding some personality traits. A lot of firms will do it after the fact. Like, hey. We hired you.

Kari Olsen: 21:25

Come to this training, and we brought this expert in, and they're doing personality stuff and team building. Well, do that before you hire the people. Right? Don't just because you can't really change people's personalities. So I I think having that part of the hiring process, promotion process can make a lot of sense.

Adam Larson: 21:44

It can make a lot of sense. But, also, I see the value of of people who are already in your firm too. And I guess, like, when so when you're trying to hire somebody, it's like those first two dates when you're dating somebody. You're putting your best foot forward. You're not showing them what you look like when you first get out of bed.

Adam Larson: 21:59

You're not showing all those different things. All those things come out later. And so how can a firm really truly see a personality of somebody if they're always putting their best foot forward in that beginning stage before they hire somebody?

Kari Olsen: 22:10

Well, it kind of goes back to my answer on where executives start. They start with themselves. And so I I think a lot of the value in personality, team building, leadership development, all those things, it's for the individual becoming more self aware. And so it's not necessarily about see the manager seeing that person's purse best foot forward. It's that person realizing, wow.

Kari Olsen: 22:36

This is my personality. What can I do to make adjustments? Right? I didn't realize that I was lacking empathy. Well, I can now find ways to develop that.

Kari Olsen: 22:48

I didn't realize that I struggled to interact socially, and I had hesitations because of my personality. Well, what can I do differently? So I think it starts with just individual personal awareness and growth, right, having that that mindset that I'm going to develop and grow. You know, managers aren't gonna change the personality, but I think they can see that individuals could change the person their their and that's the thing. Like, you know, I might know maybe I'd run hot, and I'm I'm prone to anger.

Kari Olsen: 23:19

Right? And that that's just my my personality. I'm not gonna necessarily change that, but I'm gonna learn how to manage that. Right? And so if I get personality training, leadership development training, team training, I can learn to be more self aware of that, what triggers me, maybe adjustments I need to make.

Kari Olsen: 23:37

And, really, at work, if you start seeing people after a couple weeks, months, their personality will come out. They're not always gonna be on their best foot forward. Right? Yeah. So teams will managers will figure that out.

Adam Larson: 23:49

I like that. You know, get to know yourself and your own personality and your own traits because it when you're doing that work, it's easier to identify that among others. And so you it kinda it causes you to kinda be more aware, self aware

Kari Olsen: 24:01

in a sense. That that's exactly right. Right? So I noticed when I was growing up, I was not I I used prone to anger as an interesting one because, you know, I was not hot headed or anything. And then I had kids, and I realized there were some situations that became so stressful in the moment that I would get angry or mad.

Kari Olsen: 24:23

Right? Yeah. And so as a personality researcher, I wanted to understand this better, so I, you know, read some some books and things that kinda talk about that, you know, and it helped me then see when others, right, get angry or frustrated at work. I'm like, yeah. That that might be explained by the situations being too stressful.

Kari Olsen: 24:44

It's activating their personality that they're a little prone to anger. So I need to be aware as a manager to keep those situations less stressful for that individual. Mhmm. So I'm currently a a department chair in my department, and there was one there's one individual I'm thinking of that was a little hot headed. Right?

Kari Olsen: 25:06

And, initially, it was really difficult. And then I I I remembered this. Like, oh, yeah. I I get hot headed sometimes. Like, what is triggering it?

Kari Olsen: 25:15

And so I was able to be more reflective as a supervisor about what caused that reaction from that person rather than just be upset or, you know, come down hard on that individual. I could then talk about, hey. I noticed that you got angry when these things happened. What can we do to help that in the future? So Yeah.

Kari Olsen: 25:36

Understanding myself better, like you said, helped me understand this individual better. And I feel like as a manager, I handled it better, where, generally, I would have been like, wow. That's so so difficult. Let's just move that person. Let's you know?

Kari Olsen: 25:49

Let's actually able to manage, like, manage the situation. Right? Let's let's talk about it. Let's fix it. Let's make some adjustments.

Kari Olsen: 25:57

And works improved a lot for that individual.

Adam Larson: 26:00

That's a I think that's a great example of remembering that there's more to the story than what you see. This person blowing up at it over a moment, you're like, hold on a second. What happened yesterday? What happened this morning that caused you to blow up like that? As opposed to just completely writing them off because in especially, you know, if especially if some if it's some not something they see or it is happening often, you know, you recognize that moment because of your own self reflection, which

Kari Olsen: 26:26

I think is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then you make the adjustments. Like Yeah.

Kari Olsen: 26:34

Maybe this person would thrive in a less stressful assignment. Mhmm. Maybe they work better on their own a little bit, a little more autonomous work rather than heavy handed oversight. And those are, like, little informal things that you can do as a manager that you know, little shifts in working interactions and expectations that is still fair to everyone, but each person, there's just a little bit of a different style, right, that that you might approach them with. And understanding personality can really help do those things.

Adam Larson: 27:08

Yeah. So based on this conversation, if somebody is not a manager and they're just, you know, just a employee who's working for a thing and they don't they report to people and they're listening to this, they're like, okay. Great. I need to do work on myself. But how would they approach bringing that to their manager saying, hey.

Adam Larson: 27:23

This is stuff we should do to help us be a better team. Like, what advice would you give them to try to have that conversation?

Kari Olsen: 27:30

So the the first thing is, right, you gotta be you gotta be grounded in, I wanna say truth, but solid information. Right? Sometimes we have information that gets refined over time, but you wanna approach these things with check out what's being said in the academic world or the best business books of the time, right, that kinda talk about things. So it's not what that does for me is it gives you a resource. It's not just, hey.

Kari Olsen: 27:57

We should work on this. It's, hey. Here's some grounded information that scientists and PhDs have studied and and learned or experienced based on business practices. Right? We see a lot of, like, biographies of great leaders.

Kari Olsen: 28:12

And Yeah. You know, you say, hey. This is something that I've noticed, and it could help our organization. It could help our think. Because there's there can be so much talk about personality and and workplace stuff.

Kari Olsen: 28:26

I'm grounded, and you gotta have clear actions. So Yeah. Here's the information that supports my claim. Here's some action items I think would be desirable. Right?

Kari Olsen: 28:36

Whether it's a team building activity, whether it's, we need to go to dinner more as a team and to get to know each other better outside of work, whether it's, hey. Could we structure our performance reviews slightly different? Whatever it is that might be a pain point, right, let's get a clear action plan and just talk openly. And and, hopefully, managers are open about your honest feelings. I always talk with my employees about let's help find the situation that helps you be at your best.

Kari Olsen: 29:05

It's not perform the best compared to others. It's help you, yourself, be at your best. Right? Yeah. And so I think if you can have just honest conversations about this is what would help me do better personally, Like, I would start that way.

Kari Olsen: 29:21

Like, hey, boss. It would really help me be better at work if this were happening, and this is how I understand it based off of what I've read or what I understand about this situation. I think a lot of people would be open to that.

Adam Larson: 29:36

Yeah. I think they would. You know, like, hey. Hey, boss. I read this great article by Kari Olsen, you know, and a bunch of other people, and I think it's really cool, and here's these other books and these references.

Adam Larson: 29:47

You know? But it I think it is being able to approach it from that, hey. This is what I this would help me do my work better. If the boss is paying attention enough, they'd be like, oh, wait. Maybe this might help other people too.

Kari Olsen: 30:00

Yeah. So I I primarily teach an MBA program.

Adam Larson: 30:04

Okay.

Kari Olsen: 30:05

And these are people who are mid career, right, aspiring to greatness. And it's so often where in my class, we talk about management control systems, and these are Yeah. Much in line with my the research we've been talking about. And so often, they'll say, hey. After class, I went and talked to my boss about what we talked about in class and had a dialogue.

Kari Olsen: 30:27

Right? And that's one of my favorite moments is just instant applicability of we talked about performance feedback, or we talked about performance measures, or we talked about hiring or firing people. And they instantly go to work in an honest conversation referencing, hey. I read this in my class, and we talked about it. What do you think?

Kari Olsen: 30:48

And this is how it helped me. That's one of the most satisfying moments as a teacher to see it. And it's it's actually surprised me over the years how immediately when you latch on to some topic that ties to people and personalities, my class just lights up. I mean, I had this experience. I had this experience.

Kari Olsen: 31:11

And then they go and act on it and try to improve their work for themselves and their organization. And, really, that's that's all I could ask for as a business educator.

Adam Larson: 31:21

Yeah. You really can. That's awesome. Well, Kari, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on, sharing your insight, the research you've done, and just real, like, practical application for those who are doing it every day because we all work in organizations, and we have to figure out how to deal with each other and work with each other.

Adam Larson: 31:37

So I really appreciate your insights.

Kari Olsen: 31:40

Thanks. It's been great to have have this conversation, and thanks for having time.

Announcer: 31:46

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.